


astoria (i'm warning you, I'm coming for, coming for ya)

by rebelkbex (reyanehokkain)



Series: but nobody said that this was gonna be easy [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Multi, Non-Synth!Danse, Post-Blind Betrayal, Supernatural Elements, The Institute - Freeform, The Minutemen - Freeform, The Railroad, blind betrayal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-12 22:05:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7950898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyanehokkain/pseuds/rebelkbex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia Dragomir's younger brother, Luke, died in the bomb, just like everyone else that she loved. But something about Paladin Danse in Listening Post Bravo has her questioning that fact. And Natalia isn't going to rest until she has the truth, even if that means tearing the Commonwealth apart in the process.</p><p>(ABANDONED, NEVER TO BE COMPLETED)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. we'll toast what could have been

**Author's Note:**

> So the usual yada-yada about how I legit own nothing minus some cans of Dr. Pepper and one sad work polo.
> 
> The title comes from End of an Era by Marianas Trench and is aptly appropriate for what our heroine is up to.
> 
> Now, a bit about our Sole here:
> 
> Her full name is Natalia Lukinichna Dragomir, but when she crawled out of the Vault, she started going by Nat Hawthorne (she never took Nate's last name before he died). She's 5'5", with shoulder length deep red hair, grey eyes, and an attitude for days, which she's been working on tempering while with the Brotherhood. She was born and raised in Chicago, but moved to Boston for school and stayed in the area after she met Nate. She loved Nate, but the person she was closest to was her little brother Luke, who, after being disabled by the war, moved in with them in Sanctuary Hills so he could have better access to C.I.T, who were attempting to reverse his paralysis.
> 
> Other notes: there is going to be a ton of supernatural elements in this story and I regret nothing because it's going to make the ride that much more fun. Also, I tweaked how Blind Betrayal ended because honestly, Danse, you fucking walnut, you should have WAITED for Sole to give you the all-clear.

It was Danse’s eyes that got to Natalia that day in Listening Post Bravo. 

If his eyes had been anything other than a light brown that could have sparkled with mirth, Nat would have had no problem with lifting her gun and giving Danse what he had been asking for. But in the moment that their eyes met, Nat wasn’t seeing a broken Brotherhood Paladin, a man-like machine with all his secrets exposed; no, she was seeing her brother. Her precious little Luke, the brown-eyed terror that had always been right on her heels until the war put a bullet in his back and left him dependant on a wheelchair and a patient Nat to push him from point A to point B. 

“Oh god,” she said, her voice cracking. “Oh god, I can’t.” Her arm holding her gun dropped and a sob fell from her throat.

“Natalia,” Danse’s voice was steady, so unlike all of Nat. “You have orders, you need to follow them.”

“ _Fuck_ my orders.” Natalia’s voice cracked even further. “I can’t do it. I can’t kill you. I’ve already lost so many people and you’re just sitting there and expecting me to lose even more.”

And finally, something like understanding dawns on Danse’s face.

“Oh. Oh god. I didn’t…” He trails off, the realization settling heavily on him. Instead of returning to his spoken thoughts, he reaches up and fumbles for his holotags, pulling at them, breaking them off his neck, and offering them to Nat. “Here, take these. Tell Arthur you did the job.” Natalia’s eyes widen and she feels a cold drip of trepidation down her back, like something in this plan is going to go horribly awry.

“And what are you going to do?” Nat asks, forcing her voice to sound less broken. “Just sit here?” Danse shrugs and shakes the tags.

“Who knows. I’ll figure something out. Just take these and go before Arthur sends someone to come looking for you.” Nat crosses the room slowly, afraid that this is a trick by Danse to just get her gun and do the deed himself, but he lets her take the tags without incident and then tells her again that she needs to go.

And she does. She turns on heel, avoids looking at Danse’s eyes one last time, and books it back to the elevator. She takes a deep breath once the elevator door is firmly shut and she’s heading back to the surface. Her heart is still beating in her chest though, the adrenaline rushing through her at the thought of having to kill Danse and his Luke-like eyes is keeping her tense and ready for anything.

But she’s still not ready for Arthur Maxson walking towards her when she exits the Listening Post.

“So, can I assume that you handled your mission?” Arthur asks, his voice deceptively calm as Nat hears the edge that threatens awful things if he gets an answer that he doesn’t want.

“Yeah, here,” Nat replies with a calm that she might feel only after another 200 years in a glorified freezer and tosses Danse’s holotags towards Arthur, trying to not frown when they hit his boot and bounce off. “He’s dead. It’s over Elder.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything, just bends down to pick up the tags and roll them around in his hands. Natalia sees this as her chance to escape, to get out of here before the sensible, good soldier side of her blows this all to hell. She’s just barely past Arthur when he finally speaks.

“If I go into that post and go into the basement, am I going to find a corpse or am I going to find evidence of your failure?” Nat almost wants to laugh at the tactic that Arthur chooses. It’s one that she watched her great-grandmother dozens of times, she would ask a fighter a question that implied that he didn’t get the job done and then would wait for him to slip up in whatever lie they concocted. It wasn’t a particularly slick method of getting answers and weeding out people who couldn’t handle simple missions, but to a child watching a woman who was legend in her own right breaking grown men like they were nothing, it was the truest show of power.

But Natalia has no time to reminisce over a long dead woman, not when Danse’s life is on the line. She turns around to face Arthur, arms crossed over her chest, issuing her own challenge.

“I said he was dead, _sir_.” She adds a bit of emphasis onto the title, daring him to say that she’s disobeyed him outright, instead of just implying it. Before the war, she was a lawyer, and like her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother before her, she learned that there was no greater battle to be won than one where words and wit were the weapons. Arthur rolls the holotags in his hands again before responding to her.

“These are a bit clean to have come off of a dead man.” Nat smirks, something that feels so foreign for the image that she’s tried to cultivate for the Brotherhood, but she knows that she has Arthur right where she wants him.

“Well, with all due respect, _sir_ ,” another drop of title with just enough emphasis to sound mutinous without Arthur being able to claim any sort of disrespect out of her. “Head shots tend to take a bit to bleed that far.” And with that, she knows that Arthur is trapped, he can’t question her further without calling her shooting skills into question, which at this point, is a well-known fact that her aim was damn near better than the former Paladin’s. And Arthur must agree with her silent assessment of the situation, because he drops the tags into one of the innumerable pockets on his coat and heads up the hill past her, towards the sound of a waiting Vertibird.

“Knight, when you return to the Prydwen, I’ll debrief you on what happened here personally. And then you’ll have another mission. So put your other affairs in order before your return.” Nat watches the Elder walk to the Vertibird and board it and waits for the aircraft to be well out of sight before hitting the relay on her Pip-Boy to take her to the Institute.

She’s not sure why the Institute is the first place that pops into her head, but then she remembers Danse’s eyes and she knows that what she needs is answers. And she knows that the Institute is the one place that she’s sure to get them.


	2. dry your eyes and start believing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still own nothing. Not even a copy of Fallout 4. I just keep taking the boy's copy and making him deal with it.
> 
> Also, Nat should know better than to hope for good things. She really should.

When Natalia was 14, she narrowly avoided getting a record when she beat the shit out of a neighborhood boy that had jumped Luke. She had been rounding the corner to the stop where Luke’s bus dropped him when she saw him, face down on the ground, with a boy closer to her age, standing over him, looking pleased with himself. All Nat remembered of the incident was seeing red at Luke being on the ground, unmoving. The boy claimed that she had given some sort of banshee scream before launching herself and him and pummeling his face into something that was pure bruise. Nat and Luke’s mother, Nadine, managed to get the family to drop the charges with promises that Nat would be put into some sort of anger management.

But despite all that, word spread quickly through their small, uppity suburb that the Dragomir girl had anger issues and would hit you for just looking at her funny. Back then, Nat wished that that had been the truth. Reality was that Natalia took more after her grandmother, the infamous Marlene Harper, than anything else. She was fiercely protective of her lone sibling, just like Marlene had been of her three siblings, and she found no price too steep to pay to keep them safe. Something that even now, with hundreds of years between them, Natalia found herself agreeing with.

Nat was deep in the bowels of the Institute, old files from C.I.T piled around her. When she had relayed in after her run-in with Arthur, she had been met by Shaun, who could tell, without her even speaking, that she was on a mission of some sort.

_“Hello Mother, something I can help you with?” His voice was always so calm, it unnerved Natalia, who could still hear her father and mother in the back of her memories, bickering over dumb things, like the proper way to peel a potato, their voices always full of life._

_“Actually,” she said, hoping to shock him into some sort of emotion. “Do you have any files left from the C.I.T days? I’m look specifically for files about patients would have been on site.” Shaun gave a ‘hmmm’ and thought for a second before answering._

_“I believe we do. They’ll be down in the old Records room. I can let you in and try to point you in the right direction. I’m sad to say that the room is a bit of a mess since we don’t have a properly dedicated Historian.” Shaun turned and motioned for Nat to follow him._

“God, great-grandma Leah would have been so disappointed by this mess.” Nat said to the room in general, as she was completely alone down here. Even in the days before the bomb, she could remember her mom complaining about how grandma Leah was going to hurt herself by constantly reorganizing her library and that she needed to leave the heavy lifting to one of the younger men in the family.

That was another thing that stuck out in Natalia’s memory, how well organized and stately her great-grandma Leah’s library had been. She remembered the large desk in front of the window and how it smelled of leather and honeydew. A scent that was so uniquely both of her great-grandparents in one that she always felt comforted by it. Her great-aunt Dani had joked that it was little wonder that their scents were so tied together since it seemed that wherever great-grandma Leah went, great-grandpa Adrien was never far behind, usually trying to stop his wife from whatever dumb idea she was up to that week.

And down here, in the middle of all these boxes, she felt the loss of her family keenly. She could almost see grandma Marlene digging through boxes at random, making bad jokes about how the Institute was less organized than her sexuality, which would have her wife, grandma Kathryn, groaning about how she couldn’t believe that she had married this idiot. Her mom would pipe in with something about how love makes you do dumb things which would have her dad sputtering about what the heck does that mean. Luke would probably be curled up at her feet, reading everything carefully, as to not miss any info. Like great-grandma Leah, he had trained to be a historian, but then the War happened and like the good son he was, he went off to fight for a country that had gone to hell long before they had been born. She could also imagine her great-grandmother in another corner of the room, pulling files out of boxes and handing them off to her husband, or to Micha, or to whatever member of the Praesidio that she would have dragged with her, issuing orders that the files were to be organized in a way that actually made at least an ounce of sense. Lost in the sense of nostalgia that the room gave her, she almost missed the name she was looking for.

Luka Lukich Dragomir

On paper, Luke’s full name seemed mildly absurd, but seeing it made her feel calm, as if it was telling her that her brother had been someone that had existed and not someone she made up to get her through the days. She thumbed through the file quickly, looking for the last entry date, hoping that it was the same day that the bomb dropped. While she would be sad that her brother had perished while she had lived, she could rest easy knowing that the Institute hadn’t gotten his hands on him.

But the universe is a cruel mistress and instead of the last file date being October 23rd, 2077, instead, she sees the words, “March 21st, 2199: Entry into the M7 program complete”.

Natalia thinks that she’s going to be sick.

-

Natalia relays out of the Institute basement without thinking, just knowing that she needed out of there and out of there fast. She needed away from the place that had probably committed unspeakable horrors upon the brother that she had sworn to protect with her life. She finds herself on the floor of her old house in Sanctuary, file still gripped tight in hand as she tries to stop her stomach from emptying its contents all over.

“General?” She hears a soft voice from outside. It’s Preston, he probably saw the blue light of the relay and like always, was coming to check on her. Usually, she would answer with an “I’m fine” or a “come in”, but right now, after having her hopes dashed by a single line of words, she just wants to be left alone. But a bark and a scurry of paws followed by a “Dogmeat, no!” put her second set of hopes to the rocks as well. She has enough clarity of mind to push the file out of the way of the oncoming storm of fur that is Dogmeat, but she isn’t ready for when he tackles into her and knocks her to the ground, going for her face with his tongue.

“Sorry Preston, I tried, but Dogmeat wanted Nat.” Sturges doesn’t sound all that sorry that he wasn’t able to keep Dogmeat from ambushing his owner, but Natalia isn’t actually that upset, because Dogmeat reminds her that even when humanity is full of nothing but the actual worst, dogs are still here and they are still good. She hears Preston sigh before he enters the house, but doesn’t even bother trying to look at him, keeps all her focus on the hyperactive dog attacking her with kisses.

“Sorry about Dogmeat, General.” Preston says, sounding almost as sorry as Sturges had. “But he’s been kind of a mope these past few days.”

“It’s fine Preston.” She says, as rubs her hands all over Dogmeat’s head, messing up his fur and cooing to him that he’s a good boy.

“Well, when you get a chance, that hunk of metal, Paladin Danse, showed up here late yesterday. He looks awful, if I’m being honest.”

Nat felt the world stop again.

Danse was here. Danse was in Sanctuary.

Natalia turned her head towards where she had slid the file as her brain started to fill in the blanks. The file had said that Luke had been put into the M7 program and Danse’s Institute designation was M7-97. And Nat didn’t live in a world where coincidences just happened.

Danse was Luke. Danse was her little brother and the Institute had wiped her and everyone he had loved from his memory and tried to tell him that he was a machine, that he was less than human. And he was now suffering for that.

Pushing Dogmeat off of her and reaching for the folder at the same time, Nat steeled herself for what was about to come. This was going to end one of two ways and she could only hope for the third time in as many days that it was the way that she wanted.


	3. and I hate how I need you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> September 2076. Natalia is calm, despite the series of life choices that left her with no choice at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeyyyy, so, who wants some pre-story nonsense that is going to make this even more convoluted than it already is?
> 
> Well, even if you don't, you're gonna get it anyway. ENJOY!

_It’s so hard for her to feel like she isn’t being put on display._

_She’s got a fortune in diamonds on her ears, another small fortune in pearls and emeralds around her neck and wrists, her hair is pinned up with diamond and emerald encrusted pins, and she’s not even going to start on the amount of jewels that dot her overpriced gown. But despite feeling like she’s about to be thrown to the wolves, she is calm; even though, in no less than 20 minutes, she will cease to be Ms. Natalia Dragomir and become Mrs. Nathan Hawthorne. She is calm, because even if her name changes, her blood won’t; she will still be a Dragomir, a Harper, a Volchizya, she will still be a woman from a long line of women with more blood on their hands than the entirety of the United States Government will ever have on theirs. She is calm because she knows what she is doing is only right thing that she may do in this lifetime. And at this thought, one of her hands, with its perfectly manicured nails, finds its way to her stomach, where beneath all the silk and satin and jewels, a tiny little life is growing, and it needs the protection of the image of two people who love each other._

_So she is calm, because she knows that this is the only way to protect herself and the child that she’ll be bringing into the world sooner, rather than later._

_But the peace that is around her, only achieved by shooing her attendants off for a while, is broken by a door opening and heavy footsteps coming in. She spins in the chair to face the newcomer, an act that should be impossible for the dress that she’s wearing, but she’s spent most of her life learning how to do the impossible in dresses like this, so at this point, the movement is next to nothing for her. She’s met though, by an impish grin in the too handsome and rugged face of Roger Maxson._

_“Roger,” she says with weariness. “You know that this is the dumbest idea you’ve had in a long time.”_

_“I thought that award went to me getting you pregnant.” Natalia huffs at him, blowing a loose piece of hair off of her face as Roger’s grin grows wider._

_“Oh, don’t look so smug. You know if my mother or grandmother catch you in here, they’re gonna skin you and send your remains back to your family in Boston.” Natalia tells him as he takes on a look of considering if that result is worth getting to spend even a few more minutes with her._

_“Worth it,” Roger replies, coming to an apparent decision. “Besides, I have something for you.” He crosses the room and stop at the little table that Natalia is sitting at, placing the small box that he had been hiding behind his back in front of her. Nat looks up at him, clearly confused._

_“Roger,” she starts, but he just nudges the box, imploring her to open it. She signs, but does as he clearly is asking her to do. She feels her heart speed up a little as a velvet ring box slides out into her hands, and then feels it plummet as she opens the ring box and finds the ring inside. It’s a thin silver band, perfectly dainty and lovely, but still strong enough to hold up the emeralds and pearls that make up the setting; a larger black pearl, surrounded by tiny emeralds and white seed pearls. She has not a single doubt in her mind that this isn’t anything less than an engagement ring and from the choice of jewels, her two favorites, something that she had to have mentioned at least a few times to Roger, she also has no doubt that he had this made just for her. “Oh my, Roger, it’s lovely.” She looks up at him, tears threatening at this unexpected gift. “When did you have this made?” He smiles, but it doesn’t really reach his eyes, much to her surprise._

_“Not long after our first date. Even then, when we were just teenagers, up to our ears in homework and poor life choices, I knew that you were the only woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.” Natalia swallows heavily as she realizes that Roger has been holding onto this ring for damn near eight years. “But life’s a bitch and it doesn’t look like we’re gonna get that, but even so, you deserved that ring. I just wish I could be the one putting the other one beside it.” At this, Roger picks up Nat’s left hand and prys his ring out of her right, and then slides the ring onto her left ring finger. At once, the ring settles itself onto Natalia’s finger, like it was meant to be there. Roger smiles again, but it’s even sadder than his last and something in Natalia just wants to reach out and comfort him, tell him that it’s going to be ok, that she doesn’t have to marry Nate, and that they can make this work._

_But she knows better, knows that they were both born into families where power is everything, and knows that they were never going to masters of their own lives, being little more than pawns to elders who need them to play the games that they can no longer play. But that knowledge still doesn’t stop her from reaching out and pulling Roger down to her and kissing him with everything that she’s got, it doesn’t stop Roger from putting a hand on her back and pulling her closer to him until she can feel every hard line of his body through their clothes, a position that they’ve found themselves in time and time again, with the stakes and the risks getting higher each time. Their kiss doesn’t last though, it can’t last, but it ends well before she’s ready for it too. But she feels a faint hint of pride that Roger’s lips are quite visibly stained with her lipstick and that he’s as red in the face and out of breath as she must be._

_“God Nat,” he says, and she feels her body tingle as his voice is deep and wrecked with lust. “You’re making it impossible for me to just walk away.” Natalia giggles and goes to answer him, but at the moment, she hears her mother’s voice coming from right outside the door, calling 5 minutes and yelling for the bridal party to get their butts in gear. Her and Roger share a quick look of panic, knowing that if they’re caught like this, it will be game over and everything that they’ve worked so hard for will be lost. But Roger returns to himself quicker than she does, pressing one last kiss to her lips, whispering I love you, and ducking out through the door opposite of the one that her mom is at, the one that leads to an unused backroom._

_Natalia is barely back to reality when her mom comes into the room, followed by the bridal party, which is a mixture of family and the few female friends that Nat didn’t scare away during college. They spend a few minutes cooing over her and fixing her lipstick, but 5 minutes later on the dot, she’s standing at the back of the long line of them, on her father’s arm as tells her how proud of her he is and how happy he is. Natalia smiles at him, like she didn’t just commit a sin and kiss someone who isn’t her fiancé and isn’t committing an even bigger one by carrying a child that doesn’t belong to her fiancé. She’s saved from verbally responding the fact that the wedding march starts playing and they need to focus on walking forward at the right time._

_But as she walks past where Roger is sitting with his wife and their newborn child, Natalia feels nothing but calm. She’s still convinced that this is the right thing to do, not just for herself and her child, but for Roger too, to protect him from what his family would do to him if they knew the truth. And at the end of it all, even if her last name will be Hawthorne, she’s still Natalia Dragomir and she’s been falling on the sword of duty for people that she loves long before Roger Maxson, so really, what’s one more time?_

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, come find me at twinskelletons on tumblr and watch me cry about non-Fallout related things like baseball and hockey and Hamilton.


End file.
